The mother of a slain Brooklyn dancer yesterday blasted the sex fiend who suffocated her daughter after a night at a Manhattan club — yelling at him, “You’re a coward!” during an emotional sentencing.

“You shouldn’t have been on the streets — you should have been locked in jail always for all of your life,” a sobbing Elizabeth Esquivel told Michael Mele before an Orange County judge hit him with 23 years in prison for killing her daughter in his Wallkill apartment.

“I do not know how to judge you for what you did to us, but you are a coward!” she said, as Mele stared at the floor.

Mele admitted in January to killing Laura Garza, 25 — a Texas transplant to Brooklyn who vanished after Mele picked her up at Marquee nightclub in Chelsea in December 2008.

“Mele, why did you have to wait for such a long time before saying ‘I killed her’? Those years were an eternity for us,” Esquivel said.

“For me, she has not died. I feel her alive next to me. She is a piece of my heart. To this day I hear her voice calling me, ‘Mama.’ I smell her smell,” she said.

“She did not harm anybody. All she wanted was to succeed, to work, to study to be a dance teacher because she liked music a lot — she liked to dance. She always smiled. She was always very happy.”

Mele was on parole for several sex-offense convictions — many for approaching women while masturbating — when he met Garza.

After their nightclub meeting, they headed to Mele’s upstate home, where Garza learned he had a girlfriend. She demanded a ride back to Brooklyn, and Mele silenced her by covering her nose and mouth with his hands — and later dumping her body in Scranton, Pa.

The victim’s brother, Ivan Garza, said his family will never be the same, declaring, “This person has destroyed our lives.”

The killer issued a brief, paltry apology to Garza’s family.

“I am deeply and truly sorry for my actions . . . and for my inaction in telling law enforcement what happened that night,” said Mele, dressed in a dark-blue suit and shackled as six officers stood between him and the gallery.

Ivan said his family was unmoved: “What you did to her has no pardon. I will never forgive you.”

“May God forgive you. We used to be a happy family,” Esquivel said. “We still are, but she is missing.”